Jacob T. Levy
jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy
@jacobtlevy.bsky.social

Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory, Associate member of Philosophy, Coordinator of Research Group on Constitutional Studies, McGill.
Posts here speak only for myself.
Americo-Canadian; liberaltarian; aging geek.
http://jacobtlevy.com .. more

Jacob T. Levy is an American political theorist and Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory at McGill University. Levy is the Chair of the Department of Political Science at McGill, as well as the coordinator of McGill's Research Group on Constitutional Studies and the founding director of McGill's Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds. Levy is also a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center and the Institute for Humane Studies. He is known for his expertise on multiculturalism, liberalism, and pluralism. .. more

Political science 68%
Law 8%

Well then.

No, sounds awful.

4500 books isn’t anywhere close to hoarding!

Not as far as I’ve heard.

NARRATOR…

Joe Biden pardoned a bunch of people on Trump’s enemies list who did not at that time face any federal charges. Everyone still said Biden pardoned them.

Right. So…?

Diamond-Brown conference at McGill starts today:

Federal pardons are never reported with that disclaimer in the headline, are they?

He doesn’t purport to be pardoning state crimes; he’s preempting any possible future federal cases.

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

5) Dems showed (a) it's possible to get something out of "shutting down the government" despite what the pundits said, and (b) that they could hold together for 40 days. It's not a policy win, but it changes expectations for what they can do in the future, strengthening their negotiating position.

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

4) Senate Dems did get something out of the negotiations w/r/t power of the purse. They protected the legislative branch, notably GAO. But it's something they already had that was under threat, not something they won. Same is true with the RIFs. Same is true with SNAP.

What's misleading about it?

Yes. The pardon preempts any future federal charges.
www.cnn.com/2025/11/09/p...
I assume none of the denafizication experts from postwar Germany are still around, and de-Baathification was a fiasco, but surely there are some central Europeans with experience at tearing down Lenin statues still around who can advise the US at some point in the future.
White House says Washington Commanders stadium bearing Trump’s name would be ‘beautiful’ | CNN Politics
That statement comes after ESPN reported that there have been backchannel talks between the White House and the Washington Commanders ownership group to relay Trump’s desire in having the stadium bear...
www.cnn.com

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

I would love to understand tactically and strategically why in a week of electoral victories senate Democrats are tempted to cave on the shutdown without anything to show for it.

November 9 is late enough for a first snowfall in Montreal that we can't really *complain*, but a 4-6" dump followed by days of cold rain that will cover the city in slush, in the middle of a transit strike, when people don't yet have their snow tires on, is not going to be fun.

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

ok, so *everybody but me* knew this...
Went back to the history of the Sicilian Mafia to illustrate something obvious but worth stating explicitly: The Trump administration behaves like an organized crime syndicate running a protection racket, not a representative government www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

Jacob T. Levy on Tensions Between #Immigration Control and the Rule of Law | Mercatus Center share.google/DJBYcjoibaq7...
Jacob T. Levy on Tensions Between Immigration Control and the Rule of Law
On this episode, Nathan Goodman interviews political theorist Jacob Levy about the rule of law and its tensions with mo
share.google
sometimes an Oxford comma can make all the difference

Neither said nor implied!

Now officially double my peak at the other place.
In the name of "fighting antisemitism," Indiana University appointed a Christian scholar to tell Jewish scholars what they can and cannot say - all while they invited Tucker Carlson to speak on campus. www.jta.org/2025/11/07/u...
In Indiana, a vaunted Jewish studies program is upended by red-state politics over Israel and speech - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
A leadership shakeup, a defunded graduate student and political pressure from above have turned a storied program into a flashpoint for Trump-era campus politics.
www.jta.org

MAXIMUM DEREK.

The deal returns hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. It's not actually a money loss, regardless of whether it's a moral loss.

To make up for hundreds of millions of dollars per year of frozen federal funds? How much do you imagine administrators are paid?